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GDC Online 2010: Interview with Newtoy's David Bettner
Last week, during GDC Online in Austin, Texas, I saw a panel run by Newtoy's David Bettner. Later in the week, Bettner himself met up with me to talk about the company and its popular Games With Friends titles for the iPhone. Though the company is doing great with its own App Store games (Words With Friends has over 10 million downloads and a surprisingly active user base), the first game that I asked about was actually We Rule. Newtoy designed that one for Ngmoco, and it's become one of the pioneering "freemium" titles on the App Store, using in-app purchases to fund a free-to-play Farmville-style game. Bettner told me that We Rule was the product of two companies, not just a work-for-hire. "It was a fun collaboration with Ngmoco," he said. "It was not the typical publisher/developer kind of a relationship. It was more of a collaboration of ideas." The idea for "mojo," the in-app product that pushes We Rule's gameplay forward, actually drove the whole project, both from a design and a monetization standpoint. "It was a fantastic sort of thing where as soon as you use mojo on a crop, you're like oh, I get this now, " Bettner said. "It's this magic thing that I can do to speed things up." Players have been split on the use of microtransactions in App Store titles like that, but Bettner said the model very much appeals to iPhone developers -- "the total lack of friction" on in-app purchases makes it easy to sell items in-game.
GDC Online 2010: Moon'd hands-on
On the last day of GDC this week, I heard from developer Anthony LaMantia, who had a new game named Moon'd that he wanted to show me. We met up in the lobby of the Austin Convention Center, and I got to play around for a bit with his game, a platformer with a strange twist. Instead of playing as a cartoony character like Mario or Sonic, you play as a 3D block and use left and right buttons (along with a jump) to "roll" the block around some abstract stages. It's a weird setup, but it works. The controls are a little flighty, but responsive, and the physics allow you to do some interesting things while moving around, like catching the edge of a block on a platform, or pushing a ball underneath you. LaMantia said that the plot involves saving the cow that jumped over the moon, but I didn't see any sign of the cow anywhere except the title screen. The stages involve getting your cube to the end of an area, or collecting a certain number of coins along the way.
GDC Online 2010: Hands-on and preview of WINtA
WINtA is probably the best brand new game that I've seen so far at GDC Online 2010 (this week in Austin, Texas). It's a title published by a group called OneBigGame, which is a nonprofit video game publisher. They commission and publish games, which are created for free by luminaries in the video game field, and then they sell them to customers for money that goes straight to charities around the world. Founder Martin de Ronde took the stage at GDC to allegedly talk about how to take an app from iPhone to the iPad, but what he actually did was show off this really amazing game and music platform, and he gave a road map to where the iPad version will eventually go. "WINtA" stands for "War is Not The Answer," which is what game creator Masaya Matsuura felt after September 11th, and that's what he wanted to transfer into game form. WINtA itself is actually a rhythm game -- Matsuura is well known in the gaming community for making PaRappa the Rapper, which is a highly regarded PlayStation game known for pioneering the genre that eventually launched Guitar Hero and Tap Tap Revolution. de Ronde approached Matsuura under the OneBigGame banner, asking if he would create a game to sell for charity, and with the help of Dutch developer Triangle Studios, Matsuura came up with WINtA. The app will be out on the App Store for free later this year. Check out more, including a video of the demonstration, after the break.
GDC Online 2010: OpenFeint after Game Center
The last time I spoke with the folks at OpenFeint, we were all waiting for the arrival of Apple's official Game Center app and wondering what effect it would have on third-party social networking platforms for App Store apps. Now, of course, Game Center is out. And despite the dire predictions of onlookers, OpenFeint is still rolling right along. The network continues to offer functionality to developers above and beyond what Apple's official solution provides, and it provides cross-platform services even outside of Apple's purview. OpenFeint's VP of Marketing, Eros Resmini, met up with me here on the floor of the Game Developers' Conference (going on this week in Austin) for a quick chat about what he thought of Game Center's launch, how OpenFeint is doing with Apple's official network up and running alongside of it, and what's next for the service and the network. Click "Read More" to read our interview.
TUAW's Daily App: Cut the Rope
At every one of these gaming shows (it's GDC Online this week, which I'm at for TUAW), there's usually a "game of the show" that emerges. It's something, either on the show floor or demoing behind closed doors, that everyone starts to talk about. The buzz starts at parties and in the hallways, and then it carries over into panels and starts to crop up in those casual discussions about "what you've seen this week." But so far, the game everyone's talking about this week isn't even on display at the show. Epic's Mark Rein even recommended Chillingo's newest title, Cut the Rope, to me. It's a brand new game that's already making a huge splash this week (as of this writing, it was number two on the App Store paid list), and it's all the rage among app developers and journalists here at GDC. The phrase being passed around is "Angry Birds meets Fruit Ninja," and those comparisons are apt. The idea is that you guide a little piece of candy, by cutting ropes and manipulating other items in the environment, to a cute little monster that's hungrily trying to eat it. Cut the Rope has the cute characters of Angry Birds and the fun, tactile interaction of Fruit Ninja all wrapped up into one extremely polished and shiny package. For only US$0.99, you get four stages full of levels, three stars to collect in each level (to add replayability), and to top it all off, Game Center integration for achievements and leaderboards. The iPad version is $1.99, but there's also a lite version on that device to check out. I'm not even that big of an Angry Birds fan, but I found myself giggling as I pulled off Cut the Rope's little puzzles. I was very charmed by Om Nom, the little monster who just wants that hanging candy. Cut the Rope has just barely gone live, and this is an app that is already getting into people's heads.
GDC Online 2010: Booyah's InCrowd, or how to develop an app in four weeks
Booyah first made a big splash on the App Store with the check-in game MyTown, then they stepped over to Facebook to release a game called Nightclub City before returning to Apple's platform a little while back with a title called InCrowd. Most App Store releases are known for their short development times (usually around six months or less), but InCrowd might set a record. As Booyah's Jon Parise explained in his panel at this year's GDC Online conference, Booyah created the app in just four weeks. There were a few reasons for doing this. First and foremost, the app is designed to work in conjunction with Facebook's new Places service, and because of Booyah's success with Nightclub City, Facebook granted them early access to work on and release an app for launch day (just four weeks after development began). While Parise didn't say it directly, his speech gave the impression that Booyah just wanted to try it -- could they really take an idea and turn it into a viable App Store product and brand in just four weeks' time? That, as Parise pointed out, is just about the length of Adobe Photoshop's trial period. In fact, one of their developers downloaded and used the expensive photo editor's trial all within the time of development.
TUAW's Daily App: Blue Defense: Second Wave!
One of the best reasons to come to a conference like GDC Online (which I'm at this week in Austin, Texas) is touching base with others in the iPhone and iPad community and sharing your favorite apps with each other. I've been hooking as many people as I can on Pocket Frogs (I just passed 50% of awards completed, and the app just added Game Center integration in a new update), and my colleague Jeff Scott of 148Apps recommended Blue Defense: Second Wave! to me. Blue Defense is a top-down shooter with an iPhone twist -- instead of moving your ship around as it shoots down enemy ships in 2D, you tilt your iPhone (or just touch the screen) to aim a planetary cannon, taking out ships as they come to you. The tilt interface is very intuitive, and there are even some fun multitouch functions. You can split your fire by double-tapping anywhere to create fixed aiming sights, or even grab and drag away from the planet to shoot a gigantic screen-clearing gun. This is actually the second version of the game, so there are multiple modes to get through, including two infinite modes that you can use to try and raise your score up on the game's leaderboards. There are also lots of levels to play and medals to earn while doing so. The graphics are 2D, with a simple but smooth and well-designed look, and the Retina Display makes the game look great. Blue Defense: Second Wave! is an excellent title for just US$1.99. It's also a universal build, so I bet it'll look even better on the iPad. I've heard some other good app recommendations from the panels and attendees here at the show, so stay tuned all week for more.
GDC Online 2010: Limbic Software's route to App Store success
I'm here in Austin, Texas this week for the Game Developers' Conference, and Limbic Software's Arash Keshmirian kicked off the iPhone gaming track this morning with a panel about how the company found success with their TowerMadness tower defense game. Limbic's story is similar to a lot of others that we've heard before -- the app released to little fanfare, but a few solid tweaks, strategies, and even lucky breaks after release led to lots of sales and lots of development lessons. "What really started the company," said Keshmirian, "was when we decided to make the game free." Like many other developers, he and his team found that having a huge audience is extremely important on the App Store. Releasing a free version created opportunities for in-app purchases and monetization through ads, and it even drove sales of the paid version of the app. Keshimirian shared a number of other interesting facts about what they'd found on the App Store during development as well.
